Modernist Prague
Czeching out another Prague: Prague’s early 20th-century heyday has left an exciting and eclectic architectural heritage often overlooked by visitors
Deanna MacDonald
Montreal Gazette, 24 Feb. 2006
One of my favourite places in Prague is the unusual art nouveau Café Imperial at 15 Na poříčí Street, just outside of the Old Town. It has a lost-in-time feel with patrons enveloped in a hazy atmosphere of coffee, cigarettes and sugary donuts. But the most extraordinary aspect is its 1914 décor with glazed, ceramic tiles depicting an odd mix of Egyptian gods and medieval peasants covering every surface. It is like nothing anywhere else, which is a thought I often have in Prague, a city layered with a paradoxical history and the architecture to prove it.
Prague is famed for its Gothic spires and Baroque palaces but some of its most amazing buildings come from the early 20th-century. On a recent visit I spent a few days visiting some of these art nouveau, Cubist and Functionalist structures. Neglected during the long Communist years because of their association with early democratic Czechoslovakia, today they are coming back to life and offer a glimpse of Prague’s early 20th-century golden age.
Just opposite the Imperial café is the Legiobanka (Na poříčí 24). I had walked passed this building numerous times before I properly looked at it; and when I did, I was amazed. Built in 1924 by highly original architect Josef Gočár, it is an odd mix of cylindrical shapes and folk art sculpture, the epitome of a new style: Rondo-Cubist. As the capital of a new country - Czechoslovakia, created in 1919 - Prague wanted a new, uniquely Czech architecture. Gočár gave them just that. Today still housing a bank, I stepped inside to admire the Legiobanka’s original 1920s décor that looks like it could be a silent film set.
Before Gočár was a Rondo-Cubist, he was a full-fledged Cubist, and a five-minute walk away in the Old Town is another of his masterpieces. Picasso began the Cubist style in painting but it was only in the innovative atmosphere of 1910s Prague that Cubism made the move to architecture, no where more dramatically than in the House of the Black Madonna (34 Celetná Street). Its rust-color exterior looks like origami in architecture, all angles and folds; except, that is, for a solitary niche on the northeast corner that holds the 17th-century Black Madonna statue from which the building takes its name. Built as a department store in 1912, the House of the Black Madonna was shockingly modern at the time, particularly compared to the famous Art Nouveau Municipal House, completed just around the corner a few months earlier. Today it holds, quite appropriately, the excellent museum of Czech Cubist art (www.ngprague.cz) and on the first floor, the original Cubist café has recently reopened for the first time in decades. It is a great place to linger over a sweet Czech cake and coffee served in Cubist cups and plan an excursion out to the residential neighbourhood of Vyšehrad, where Gočár’s contemporary Josef Chochol built Cubist apartments and villas (such as the prismatic 1913 Villa Kovařovič at 3 Libušina Street), for fashionable clients.
We don’t often think of suburbs having architectural masterpieces but as Prague grew its sophisticated population built avant-garde villas, none more so than the 1928 Müller Villa (14 Nad hradním vodojemem, www.mullerovavila.cz), which stands overlooking the city in the neighbourhood of Střešovice. The design of influential architect Adolf Loos, who famously stated, “ornament is crime,” what this Functionalist home lacks in adornment it makes up for in luxurious materials and elegant line, all of which miraculously survived years as a socialist apartment building and the offices of the Marxist-Leninist Institute. Today it is open to visitors, who ooh and aah over its sleek design and spectacular Prague views.
The same trendsetters who built these suburban retreats would have hung out downtown in Wenceslas Square. This famous square is still a meeting point, and although today it has a bit of a seedy edge, its architecture still echoes its earlier glory. Walking along its length I could see a spectrum of modernist styles from the elegant art nouveau Grand Hotel Europa (no.25) whose café’s period décor evokes the fin-de-siècle atmosphere of pre-World War I Prague; to the sleek lines of the 1927–29 Functionalist Baťa Building (no.6), which once more (since the 1990s) sells Tomáš Baťa’s shoes. Reflecting the cutting-edge atmosphere of the inter-war city, this same shoe store was to be part of an avant-garde art installation by pioneer Kinetic artist Zdeněk Pešánek. Around 1935, Pešánek designed a luminous commercial sign for the Baťa façade involving baroque clouds and fragmented male and female torsos projecting from the building. Never completed, the surrealistic plans can be seen at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Trade Fair Palace (Dukelských hrdinů 47, www.ngprague.cz), a short tram ride away from the centre in the neighborhood of Holešovice. This huge ship of a building is itself a Functionalist gem that attracted international attention when constructed by architects Oldřich Tyl and Josef Fuchs in 1926–28; Le Corbusier himself visited and stated that the Trade Fair Palace had shown him “how to make large buildings.” Its most impressive aspect is its mammoth sky-lit atrium surrounded by balconied galleries that slope inward, resembling a sleek ocean liner from a 1920s art deco poster.
There are other intriguing modernist architectural spaces in Prague’s centre. Just to the west of Wenceslas Square, at the junction of Jungmannova and Národní streets is the unusual Rondo-Cubist Palác Adria; built for an Italian insurance company in 1923–25, it is best described as an Italian medieval fortress meets Lego set. Around the corner, monumental caryatids by Jan Štursa grace the facade of architect Jan Kotĕra’s Urbánek Publishing House (Jungmannova 30) built in 1913 and considered the first modernist building in Prague. Here Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius and other luminaries of the avant-garde scene lectured in the 1920s. Near by along the Vltava River, the 1927-30 Mánes Gallery (Masarykovo nábřeží 250) daringly combines a sleek functionalist art gallery with a medieval water tower.
Opposite Mánes, across the Vltava, rise the majestic towers of Prague Castle, the symbol of royal rule since the 10th-century. Even this iconic complex felt the effects of early 20th-century Modernism. In 1920 the first Czechoslovak president, TG Masaryk, gave idiosyncratic Slovene architect Josip Plečnik the task of turning “a monarchical castle into a democratic” one. Instead of using the popular Modernist styles, Plečnik took inspiration from “timeless architecture” - ancient Greece, Roman, Egypt. Inside the castle he created a spectacular Egyptian-inspired ‘Hall of Columns,’ which can be glimpsed as you enter the Castle courtyards via the Mathias Gate. In these Baroque courtyards he added an obelisk and the marvellous Bull Staircase, whose Cretan-inspired canopy leads to the South Gardens, which offer one of the best views in the city. Here Plečnik added classically inspired colonnades and observation points as well as his own version of yin/yang: a massive granite bowl, designed as the “female” counterpart to the “male” obelisk in the courtyard. Although President Masaryk liked his work, his opponents didn’t: it was too unorthodox and Plečnik wasn’t even Czech. Taste, however, is rarely constant through time, and today Plečnik’s renovations are considered ingenious and are admired as yet another layer in Prague’s extraordinary architectural history.
IF YOU GO
Where to stay:
The K+K Hotel Central (Hybernská 10, Prague 1, (+42 0) 225-022-000, www.kkhotels.com) is a beautiful Art Nouveau building done up in hip, 21st century style. Also try Happy House Rentals (Vodičková 37, Prague 1, +(42 0) 222 311 40, www.happyhouserentals.com), which offers short-term apartment rentals throughout the city.
Where to eat:
Café Imperial: Na poříčí 15, Prague 1, +(42 0) 222 316 012, www.hotelimperial.cz/cafe/home.asp.
Grand Café Orient (the Cubist Café in the House of the Black Madonna): Celetná 34, Prague 1, +(42 0) 224 224 240.
The Municipal House has a wonderfully Art Nouveau café, as well as French and Czech restaurants (námĕstí Republiky 5, +(42 0) 222 002 101, www.obecnidum.cz)
To find your own Cubist coffee cup, shop at Modernista (Konviktská 5, Prague 1, (+ 42 0) 222 220 113, www.modernista.cz), which has reproductions and originals of early 20th-century décor.
For more on early 20th-century Prague see: Deanna MacDonald, Art for Travellers - Prague (Interlink, 2006), and Ivan Margolius, Prague - A guide to twentieth-century architecture (1996).
Deanna MacDonald
Montreal Gazette, 24 Feb. 2006
One of my favourite places in Prague is the unusual art nouveau Café Imperial at 15 Na poříčí Street, just outside of the Old Town. It has a lost-in-time feel with patrons enveloped in a hazy atmosphere of coffee, cigarettes and sugary donuts. But the most extraordinary aspect is its 1914 décor with glazed, ceramic tiles depicting an odd mix of Egyptian gods and medieval peasants covering every surface. It is like nothing anywhere else, which is a thought I often have in Prague, a city layered with a paradoxical history and the architecture to prove it.
Prague is famed for its Gothic spires and Baroque palaces but some of its most amazing buildings come from the early 20th-century. On a recent visit I spent a few days visiting some of these art nouveau, Cubist and Functionalist structures. Neglected during the long Communist years because of their association with early democratic Czechoslovakia, today they are coming back to life and offer a glimpse of Prague’s early 20th-century golden age.
Just opposite the Imperial café is the Legiobanka (Na poříčí 24). I had walked passed this building numerous times before I properly looked at it; and when I did, I was amazed. Built in 1924 by highly original architect Josef Gočár, it is an odd mix of cylindrical shapes and folk art sculpture, the epitome of a new style: Rondo-Cubist. As the capital of a new country - Czechoslovakia, created in 1919 - Prague wanted a new, uniquely Czech architecture. Gočár gave them just that. Today still housing a bank, I stepped inside to admire the Legiobanka’s original 1920s décor that looks like it could be a silent film set.
Before Gočár was a Rondo-Cubist, he was a full-fledged Cubist, and a five-minute walk away in the Old Town is another of his masterpieces. Picasso began the Cubist style in painting but it was only in the innovative atmosphere of 1910s Prague that Cubism made the move to architecture, no where more dramatically than in the House of the Black Madonna (34 Celetná Street). Its rust-color exterior looks like origami in architecture, all angles and folds; except, that is, for a solitary niche on the northeast corner that holds the 17th-century Black Madonna statue from which the building takes its name. Built as a department store in 1912, the House of the Black Madonna was shockingly modern at the time, particularly compared to the famous Art Nouveau Municipal House, completed just around the corner a few months earlier. Today it holds, quite appropriately, the excellent museum of Czech Cubist art (www.ngprague.cz) and on the first floor, the original Cubist café has recently reopened for the first time in decades. It is a great place to linger over a sweet Czech cake and coffee served in Cubist cups and plan an excursion out to the residential neighbourhood of Vyšehrad, where Gočár’s contemporary Josef Chochol built Cubist apartments and villas (such as the prismatic 1913 Villa Kovařovič at 3 Libušina Street), for fashionable clients.
We don’t often think of suburbs having architectural masterpieces but as Prague grew its sophisticated population built avant-garde villas, none more so than the 1928 Müller Villa (14 Nad hradním vodojemem, www.mullerovavila.cz), which stands overlooking the city in the neighbourhood of Střešovice. The design of influential architect Adolf Loos, who famously stated, “ornament is crime,” what this Functionalist home lacks in adornment it makes up for in luxurious materials and elegant line, all of which miraculously survived years as a socialist apartment building and the offices of the Marxist-Leninist Institute. Today it is open to visitors, who ooh and aah over its sleek design and spectacular Prague views.
The same trendsetters who built these suburban retreats would have hung out downtown in Wenceslas Square. This famous square is still a meeting point, and although today it has a bit of a seedy edge, its architecture still echoes its earlier glory. Walking along its length I could see a spectrum of modernist styles from the elegant art nouveau Grand Hotel Europa (no.25) whose café’s period décor evokes the fin-de-siècle atmosphere of pre-World War I Prague; to the sleek lines of the 1927–29 Functionalist Baťa Building (no.6), which once more (since the 1990s) sells Tomáš Baťa’s shoes. Reflecting the cutting-edge atmosphere of the inter-war city, this same shoe store was to be part of an avant-garde art installation by pioneer Kinetic artist Zdeněk Pešánek. Around 1935, Pešánek designed a luminous commercial sign for the Baťa façade involving baroque clouds and fragmented male and female torsos projecting from the building. Never completed, the surrealistic plans can be seen at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Trade Fair Palace (Dukelských hrdinů 47, www.ngprague.cz), a short tram ride away from the centre in the neighborhood of Holešovice. This huge ship of a building is itself a Functionalist gem that attracted international attention when constructed by architects Oldřich Tyl and Josef Fuchs in 1926–28; Le Corbusier himself visited and stated that the Trade Fair Palace had shown him “how to make large buildings.” Its most impressive aspect is its mammoth sky-lit atrium surrounded by balconied galleries that slope inward, resembling a sleek ocean liner from a 1920s art deco poster.
There are other intriguing modernist architectural spaces in Prague’s centre. Just to the west of Wenceslas Square, at the junction of Jungmannova and Národní streets is the unusual Rondo-Cubist Palác Adria; built for an Italian insurance company in 1923–25, it is best described as an Italian medieval fortress meets Lego set. Around the corner, monumental caryatids by Jan Štursa grace the facade of architect Jan Kotĕra’s Urbánek Publishing House (Jungmannova 30) built in 1913 and considered the first modernist building in Prague. Here Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius and other luminaries of the avant-garde scene lectured in the 1920s. Near by along the Vltava River, the 1927-30 Mánes Gallery (Masarykovo nábřeží 250) daringly combines a sleek functionalist art gallery with a medieval water tower.
Opposite Mánes, across the Vltava, rise the majestic towers of Prague Castle, the symbol of royal rule since the 10th-century. Even this iconic complex felt the effects of early 20th-century Modernism. In 1920 the first Czechoslovak president, TG Masaryk, gave idiosyncratic Slovene architect Josip Plečnik the task of turning “a monarchical castle into a democratic” one. Instead of using the popular Modernist styles, Plečnik took inspiration from “timeless architecture” - ancient Greece, Roman, Egypt. Inside the castle he created a spectacular Egyptian-inspired ‘Hall of Columns,’ which can be glimpsed as you enter the Castle courtyards via the Mathias Gate. In these Baroque courtyards he added an obelisk and the marvellous Bull Staircase, whose Cretan-inspired canopy leads to the South Gardens, which offer one of the best views in the city. Here Plečnik added classically inspired colonnades and observation points as well as his own version of yin/yang: a massive granite bowl, designed as the “female” counterpart to the “male” obelisk in the courtyard. Although President Masaryk liked his work, his opponents didn’t: it was too unorthodox and Plečnik wasn’t even Czech. Taste, however, is rarely constant through time, and today Plečnik’s renovations are considered ingenious and are admired as yet another layer in Prague’s extraordinary architectural history.
IF YOU GO
Where to stay:
The K+K Hotel Central (Hybernská 10, Prague 1, (+42 0) 225-022-000, www.kkhotels.com) is a beautiful Art Nouveau building done up in hip, 21st century style. Also try Happy House Rentals (Vodičková 37, Prague 1, +(42 0) 222 311 40, www.happyhouserentals.com), which offers short-term apartment rentals throughout the city.
Where to eat:
Café Imperial: Na poříčí 15, Prague 1, +(42 0) 222 316 012, www.hotelimperial.cz/cafe/home.asp.
Grand Café Orient (the Cubist Café in the House of the Black Madonna): Celetná 34, Prague 1, +(42 0) 224 224 240.
The Municipal House has a wonderfully Art Nouveau café, as well as French and Czech restaurants (námĕstí Republiky 5, +(42 0) 222 002 101, www.obecnidum.cz)
To find your own Cubist coffee cup, shop at Modernista (Konviktská 5, Prague 1, (+ 42 0) 222 220 113, www.modernista.cz), which has reproductions and originals of early 20th-century décor.
For more on early 20th-century Prague see: Deanna MacDonald, Art for Travellers - Prague (Interlink, 2006), and Ivan Margolius, Prague - A guide to twentieth-century architecture (1996).
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